Math Day
Monday, March 21, 2005 at 5:10 PM | Filed under high school, math
Today was Math Day. It was a field trip to the University of Washington. Before it all got started, we were all seated in a huge auditorium in Meany Hall. Aaron and I thought about what presentations to view later, and we thought that Hyperbolic Geometry would be fun, and so would Aeronautics and Astronautics. However, A&A required a "ticket", and neither Mr. Worster nor any of the other teachers had tickets for that. So instead, Mr. Worster gave us two tickets to Applied Physics, and said to try to trade those for tickets to Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Everybody had to watch the plenary presentation, whether they wanted to or not. Everyone was gathered in the auditorium in Meany Hall to watch some guy give a presentation about securely transferring data (like credit card numbers, etc.) over the Internet. I thought it was pretty interesting, but word is that a lot of people found it to be "boring" and "stupid". Ah well, I guess not everything can please everybody.
So afterwards, Aaron and I went to the ticket trading booth, where people set down tickets they wanted in exchange for tickets they didn't want. Aaron, who is much taller than me, could see that there were no A&A tickets there. One guy had one A&A ticket, and didn't want it, but refused to give it to us because he wanted it to exchange for something better.
We went to the hyperbolic geometry presentation, which was actually called Images of Hyperbolic Geometry. Aaron was disappointed that he only skimmed the surface of hyperbolas, mostly only showing pictures. He also complained that the idiot had no idea what he was talking about, but to be fair, he wasn't a professor, despite the fact that I kept calling him "the professor" (it wasn't until later that I found out he wasn't one). But still, to be fair, the pictures were interesting and neat!
Since we couldn't get tickets to A&A, we went to Trial by Mathematics, which didn't require a ticket (the presentations didn't require tickets, only the "field trips" and hands-on things). It was interesting because she mentioned that most people only identify other people by their hair and eyes, the most common things mentioned were higher on the body. She discussed how math has been used in several trials, many of them using probability ("it's a 1 in 12 million chance this couple did it...").
Lunch was next, and since it was an hour, we went and played with those little logic thinking sliding puzzle things that you see in gift and puzzle stores and such. Then we all boarded the buses, and one girl was missing. But they found her and we left.
My favorite part was that the auditorium was called Meany Hall.
Everybody had to watch the plenary presentation, whether they wanted to or not. Everyone was gathered in the auditorium in Meany Hall to watch some guy give a presentation about securely transferring data (like credit card numbers, etc.) over the Internet. I thought it was pretty interesting, but word is that a lot of people found it to be "boring" and "stupid". Ah well, I guess not everything can please everybody.
So afterwards, Aaron and I went to the ticket trading booth, where people set down tickets they wanted in exchange for tickets they didn't want. Aaron, who is much taller than me, could see that there were no A&A tickets there. One guy had one A&A ticket, and didn't want it, but refused to give it to us because he wanted it to exchange for something better.
We went to the hyperbolic geometry presentation, which was actually called Images of Hyperbolic Geometry. Aaron was disappointed that he only skimmed the surface of hyperbolas, mostly only showing pictures. He also complained that the idiot had no idea what he was talking about, but to be fair, he wasn't a professor, despite the fact that I kept calling him "the professor" (it wasn't until later that I found out he wasn't one). But still, to be fair, the pictures were interesting and neat!
Since we couldn't get tickets to A&A, we went to Trial by Mathematics, which didn't require a ticket (the presentations didn't require tickets, only the "field trips" and hands-on things). It was interesting because she mentioned that most people only identify other people by their hair and eyes, the most common things mentioned were higher on the body. She discussed how math has been used in several trials, many of them using probability ("it's a 1 in 12 million chance this couple did it...").
Lunch was next, and since it was an hour, we went and played with those little logic thinking sliding puzzle things that you see in gift and puzzle stores and such. Then we all boarded the buses, and one girl was missing. But they found her and we left.
My favorite part was that the auditorium was called Meany Hall.
